BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) is a satellite broadband service operated by Inmarsat using geostationary satellites. Delivers IP connectivity at 384 Kbps to 800 Kbps depending on terminal class, plus voice and SMS over the same link. Dominant in maritime, aviation, oil and gas, broadcast journalism, and humanitarian deployments where Iridium’s lower bandwidth is insufficient and Starlink is not yet practical or politically available.
What it means in practice
BGAN’s architecture differs from Iridium’s. Geostationary means the satellite is over the equator at fixed positions; the terminal needs line-of-sight to the southern sky (in northern hemisphere) and the antenna must be pointed (some terminals auto-point, others require manual alignment with the included compass-and-elevation tool). The latency is higher (550ms minimum due to the round-trip distance to GEO), but the bandwidth is meaningfully larger than Iridium, enough to support video uplinks for news broadcasts, real-time database queries for humanitarian field assessments, and remote-access workflows for engineering and oil-and-gas operations. The terminal classes (Class 1, 2, 3, plus Hughes, Cobham, Wideye implementations) trade size, weight, and bandwidth.
Who uses it, and against whom
Customer base: broadcast journalism (BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, France 24 field bureaus all carry BGAN gear in conflict-zone kits), humanitarian organizations (MSF, ICRC, OCHA), oil and gas remote operations, maritime ships, aviation cockpit communications. The threat surface: Inmarsat is UK-incorporated and subject to UK lawful-intercept obligations under the Investigatory Powers Act, plus US lawful-intercept obligations for traffic transiting US ground stations. The geostationary architecture means the satellite footprint is large; a terminal’s emission can be intercepted by RF-direction-finding equipment within the satellite’s coverage area, though the BGAN signal characteristics are less easy to passively monitor than older Inmarsat services. Application-layer encryption (Signal, ProtonMail, VPN over the IP link) is the defensive layer for content; the link metadata is unavoidably visible to Inmarsat and reachable on legal process.
What you can change today
If your deployment justifies BGAN over Iridium (you need bandwidth, not just voice), spec the terminal class against the data load (Class 2 for laptop email and small file transfers; Class 1 or higher for video, database queries, multi-user). Buy or lease the airtime plan that matches the operation duration. Practice setup and pointing in a non-emergency context; the alignment is a learnable skill but failure under pressure is common for teams that have not rehearsed. For sensitive content: route everything via Signal (over WLAN from the BGAN access point), VPN tunnels for file transfer, and Proton or Tutanota for email. Treat the BGAN link as an internet connection, hostile by default, requiring application-layer protection.